Welcome to Media Hotshots, a series of interviews with some of the most celebrated Editors in lifestyle, fashion, beauty and interiors media today. All of the Editors interviewed in this series subscribe to PRShots and PressArea and the majority of those have said that heavily rely on its service in order to make their jobs easier, therefore the opportunity for you and your brands to gain more coverage into their pages is made all the more possible and this series of interviews is aimed at not only celebrating their lives, but to help provide you with some golden nuggets that if used, could make you a complete hero
(00:44) Nick: So for our first guest, and I’m really excited because we’ve got the lovely Lynda Bell who is, to give you a bit of history: - she’s worked at Red, Prima, InStyle, Easy Living, Woman & Home and Stylist magazines, and was most recently was the Fashion Director at Good Housekeeping magazine which is the UK’s biggest selling glossy magazine, also having worked at Time Inc, Conde Nast and Hearst, as well as having her own freelance clients, including Boden, Crew Clothing, Harrods, Hello! magazine, JD Williams, Joules, Marks & Spencer, and Tu at Sainsbury's, to name just a few Lynda's vast knowledge of the industry is just phenomenal. So I want to welcome our first guest Lynda Bell!
And as I was saying to Linda just before the interview it just seems weird to give that big intro without giving you a massive round of applause
Lynda: - Thanks for that! Very kind, very kind
(01:51) Nick: - So thank you for being our first, and with everything that’s going on at the moment in the industry and for a lot of industries we’re going to be discussing: -
...so there’s a lot to go over, and I guess we should start at the very beginning and ask you how you went from school to becoming an Editor?
(02:46) Gosh, well, I mean, you wouldn't think, but I actually had a different career before this, so, you know, you listed all the titles and the work that I've done, but I left school wanting to go into business, thinking that that's the safe role. Wouldn't think that now necessarily. So I just went to university and did business administration. I used to speak Spanish and I used to live abroad, so did it with a combination of Spanish as well and went through the normal rigmaroles and finally worked in human resources, worked for the BBC, worked at a big international, ad agency and even working in the companies there, I saw these flashes of creativity that I was really drawn to, but obviously the role I was doing was very uncreative and I really didn't get the job satisfaction for it, so I actually left that very comfortable career to intern at Red. That was my very first internship at Red magazine under Nicola Rose who taught me very, very well.
And I had such career ambition and wanting to make a success of this new future of mine that I really just cracked on with work. I just did anything they asked me to do. I knew that all these samples need to go back, I'm going to blitz this cupboard, and then I might have to be able to go on the shoot, and do all those exciting things that the interns want to do.
So I did your normal six month internships went to Be Magazine, the good old days of Be Magazine, “Be who you want to be”. Then went on to InStyle for a year as Fashion Assistant, and then I managed to get my first proper job at Easy Living, which was part of Conde Nast and I was there for about four years and I loved it - it was amazing! I started a Fashion Assistant and left as Junior Fashion Editor, and again, just meeting these amazing women, you know because, it's a predominantly female based industry, one of the few, and I've been incredibly blessed with who I've worked with and interestingly the industry is not that big. These women are still out there working, they might be on the different side of the roles, but I still see them, I still work with them. So that was Easy Living, and then when I left Easy Living after five years or so, I went freelance and I flipped the role a little bit and embarked on commercial styling. So that's where the freelance clients like you're talking about came from. I do a lot of work for Bode and I do their outfitting, shooting, art directing that kind of thing. Marks & Spencer also, Joules all of those titles, but I seem to have covered all the publishing houses and majority of the biggest British brands out there…
…and all of that has been punctuated with family. Two boys. One's just gone back to school today. The other one is two and a half years old, so they keep me on my toes and they just add the spice of life, really. So. It's been interesting…
It's not been the, you know, “I went to fashion school and I studied it”. I mean, I did do that when I was at Red magazine interning, because I wanted to really hone the skill on “did I want to do writing? Did I want to do buying, did I want to do designing. I knew I couldn't draw for toffee, but you know, is that the side I want to go into, but it was really journalism that I loved and then honing down on there that it was definitely visually led, creative, you know, fashion stories, fashion styling, rather than fashion writing on say a newspaper or a specialist title. So it was great. I mean, really good fun, but I seem to have had two different careers and nine lives along the way.
(6:44) Nick: It's brilliant. It's very varied. It's amazing. And that's why I'm thinking for our guests it's going to be really interesting to get your perspective on everything, especially considering you've worked for so many different titles as well.
So is there a difference? Is there a marked difference in between Time Inc and Hearst and..
Lynda: I mean are very small differences, but you know, essentially the job is the job. We all go to the same press days, we all go and see the same samples. We all tend to ask for the same ones, also I've been lucky to work for similarly veined magazines on the commercial side of the fashion industry. I didn't go towards Harper's or Vogue because it just didn't come naturally to me, that kind of styling, whereas the commercial side has women looking beautiful in real clothes that you can actually go and buy now, that's what attracted me. We certainly style similarly, so the job is essentially the same whilst in the same breath, the job has changed massively over the last six months, as you can imagine but the job is the job, you know. We call in samples, we chase PRs, we get imagery, we shoot them, we write them, we do our credits, we send it to press, the job is similar, or it’s the same in all the different houses that I've worked in, details and different formalities change, but the job is the same, really. And like I said, it's a small industry, it's quite lovely that you were talking about Paula (Moore) I know her well, and I wish her really well as well. We’re on competitive titles, there's no competition really. You're doing your job and we're all blessed to have this job.
(8:34) Nick: You’re right and in fact, that's what I've found out, actually, from talking to all of the Editors prior to that. Julie (Player) and Paula are going to have an interview together and we were going to try and get a big session with lots of people present, but physically it wasn't going to be possible, but yes, exactly, there seems to be so much love in the industry.
Lynda: There is!
(8:50) Nick: How have things changed in general since you've got into the industry? And I mean, obviously bringing into it the last six months as well.
Lynda: Yeah, well, in a broader scheme the biggest change has been digital. Things going online. Writing for the magazine titles online presence has been massive. So each of us would have to write once a week for each of the online sites. Each of us within the team doing that, so there’s at least 10 new articles going online. That's something that we never had to even think about five years ago. There would have been a specialist digital team, and whilst we still have that, they definitely want the Editor's voice on the website as well as in the titles, so that's massive. So huge amount of digital content, the emphasis on digital as well. I remember working at Easy Living, Conde Nast and going to press days and taking photos of items that we liked, printing every single photo out, putting them in lever arch files. Hearst?! Paperless! Absolutely paper-free! We don't hold look books, everything is based on the server, everything is digital - so that's amazing! The other big difference in the last few years has been the concept of ‘hubbing’, in a publishing house. So like I said, at Hearst recently, I was in the Lifestyle hub which included Good Housekeeping, Red magazine and Prima. We have the fashion hub, which is Harper's and ELLE. And we used to think we were busy when we worked in one title. Working on three, I know other publishing houses have bigger hubs of magazines working together. That's busy - plus doing digital as well. So the concept of hubbing. But when we talk later about how we actually get into the role and how the nitty gritty of working on different titles, I would be working on all three titles in the same publishing month, when those three titles go to print, I was working on those. There's no “oh well I’ll pass that to Prima” because that's me; I'm still doing it all. So that's been a really challenging and really rewarding concept as well.
(11:10) Nick: Yeah, wow! Have you ever got it mixed up where you've done the wrong thing for the wrong title?
Lynda: It's quite interesting, when you sign into, well, when there were press days that is, we would go and sign in the little book, and you're like, Good Housekeeping and Red and Prima and then you're like well, we just do it all now, and that’s what it’s like. There was no confusion, because the titles were different. Although we're Lifestyle hub, what I would call in for Red would be very different to Prima likewise for GH, so we would know that the brands personalities sing differently, the way we'd style would be different for each of them. But, you know, we're still there, the same team working on three titles.
(11:50) Nick: Sure. And how has it changed more recently because of COVID? I mean, I guess a lot more people are working from home!? Has there been a massive cull or?
Lynda: Everyone’s working from home. I mean, we all left House of Hearst a week before proper lockdown hit in the UK. It's had a massive impact! I mean, it obviously impacts on where you work, so we were practicing, James Waldman, the CEO of Hearst told us all for about three weeks before. So I think it was March that it started, and we would all, every night take all of our network cables, our work laptops, chargers, everything we would need to. You know, he said “if we are locked down tonight, I don't want anybody going into the office to pick up their equipment”, so for about two or three weeks we were lugging our laptops home every night going “Oh, this is a bit much, isn't it? Oh, I'm just going to leave it” and then lo and behold, one person in the office contacted us saying that they had symptoms and that was it! Office was shut down, not one person was allowed in and we were all working virtually from our tables, from our homes, wherever that was, from that day, from that morning and that went on for about four months. So it massively impacted on how you work, because at the same time as that, I have two rugrats running around the house and you know, they weren't going to school and they weren't going to nursery. So it would impact on your work life balance. I don't know if we have that any more, but we certainly have more of a family, or life impact on work and vice versa. And, the aspect of thinking in the old days, when someone say I'm working from home, there might be a bit of an eyebrow like, “Oh okay, you're working from home!?” now it's like “well, of course we're working from home!”, and of course we've sent three, four magazine issues to press since people are working from home, and high quality at that. So the idea of, you know, juggling and just understanding that people have lives, people have families and people do have to go out for their hours exercise a day when we had that or, you know, popping into the supermarket when it was less busy and work understood absolutely, totally. So that was really important, but also, you know, how we styled; I did three main fashion shoots, in lockdown. I did them virtually over Zoom. Exactly like this; sending clothes abroad to teams, you know, a husband and wife team shot my September story in their garden, and I was on a zoom with them for eight hours art directing it and giving them help for the shoot, and I just think from now on, it's still going to live with us for a good number of years, I think. Are we going to have press stays again? We have no idea. You know, we have virtual press days coming, you know, we have launches coming through our doors, our letter boxes now. Summer shoots, you know, we would happily jet off to Miami in the past, these are now going to be Brighton beach, studio setups much more, and then sadly, the budget impact, you know, magazines will be feeling the pinch hugely and likewise passing that on, whether they have to cut people down on the sets or, you know what that final impact will be, people did just pick up the magazines at train stations, at supermarkets - people aren't doing that as much now. It's much more online shopping. So all of that has had a drip down effect. But I think that COVID aside, there's been a huge change in magazines and fashion in the last few years, the biggest thing for me has been the sustainability aspect of fashion shopping. Going into more of a seasonless style that might be following on with the lack of emphasis on press days, you know, it's more of a brands identity, you buy into your brand, not necessarily new season, new wardrobe. Huge focus now on determined strategy really - it’s not just a token effort that, you know, this brand has an organic t-shirt over there and everything else has been made in a more unethical, maybe further-abroad-produced manner. This is now much more critical to companies and that's something that we're taking on board as well and we're looking at maybe giving more clever styling tricks and updates and re-freshes to your capture your wardrobe rather than “right, you've got to get rid of everything last year and now you've got to buy all of this”, fashion has changed massively. In the last couple of seasons at the shows there hasn't been huge, massive trends, it's like “we're continuing with shorts, we're now going into culottes”, it's like a gentle pace really now. There's not that big change that there used to be a few years ago where we would go from pretty to goth, to rock, to lace, it’s much more gentler now I think and more power to it I'd say.
(17:11) Nick: Totally. We definitely noticed that there were a lot more images being downloaded in situ actually, rather than the cutouts, and I'm guessing that's because there was no physical ability to go out and get those shots. I'm wondering whether you feel that you'll see that continue as the months go on? And it'd be interesting to get your feedback on that as well what the PRs and the brands can do to help you with the current circumstances. If there's anything they could do over via PRShots or just in general, that could help you to help them?
Lynda: We rely so much on PRShots, like you said, and, and having that content imagery available to us, just knowing that the imagery that that’s being put online is the most up to date. Obviously, if we go onto it and we love something, then we see “actually, this is spring summer last year”, you know, we just don't want to see that, and it doesn't help us at all. Prices are always really important, but I do think this is going to carry on and having the flip side of knowing how brands are working at the moment. I'm shooting and I've been shooting all of this week, I'm shooting all of next week for brands as well, and we are up and running. So shoots are happening; they've massively changed, there’s much less people on set. I'm I have to wear my mask all day, so it is happening. Shoots are back up and running, but there's a huge catch up that they're running through, you know, M&S couldn't shoot Boden, couldn't shoot at all. So there's a massive catch up for Autumn / Winter season. And for big campaign imagery, it's still going to happen, it will just be in a new guise. It will still have to be up there. Stores will still need pictures in their windows. Companies will still need imagery on their banners at the top of the website, so the imagery will come, whether it's, you know, influencers shooting themselves from home or, you know, that kind of husband, wife model photographer combo, which seems to be running strong for most brands and editorial titles that we've used, that might be carrying on for a little while longer.
(19:19) Nick: I noticed as well, it was an unfortunate situation because I guess the brands themselves weren't able to get a lot of images, and the Editors wanted images, so it was kind of like, wow!
Lynda: Yeah and for the brands further down the line, they couldn't even get the product because they couldn't get it shipped and they couldn't get it produced. Things like the zips might have been produced in China where this all started, and the leather was in Italy, and so nothing could be produced for certain brands that I know, and when you kind of pick it back a little bit, when you're just thinking “oh this is really hard for me” and then you think “Oh, actually companies are really struggling massively at the moment!”
(20:03) Nick: Exactly. Well hopefully we've all adapted to it and it's interesting what you said about (virtual) press days and I think a lot of brands are thinking about doing that and I guess, alright, it's not going to be natural, but I guess it makes things easier because you don't have to physically go out.
Lynda: Things have been hard. I mean, they were hard slogs. They could go on for two months at a time and you know, you have 8 to 10, if not more, a day to get to plus the normal day job of a monthly long lead and they were hard work and tiring. Of course we have a lovely little bag maybe when you leave, but half the time you're going around taking photos, saying “hi” to your friendly PR, onto the next one. And splitting them up with your team as well, so you don't even get to go around with your team. So a little change for us was well received I have to say. It did go down well
(20:51) Nick: That's good. Well, it's good and everyone’s got to adapt as well, so it's interesting. So what does your typical day look like? What are you doing currently?
Lynda: Well, so I recently left Good Housekeeping and Hearst earlier in the summer, and I’ve been juggling family, juggling freelance title, uh, freelance clients as well. Getting back into that, obviously the impact of COVID on those clients has meant that for the last month or so they're only just starting to cue back up for shoots and my week varies completely depending on where I am in the lifespan of a photo shoot. Am I mood boarding and art directing for a shoot? Am I helping with model casting? I've been spending all of this week outfitting for a brand, which I'm shooting next week. So it changes massively and I can also be doing the editing as well on the other side of the shoot, but it's very, very varied. The boys obviously are a full time job in themselves, so it just keeps me young, keeps me on my toes and, thanks now that we've got this technology of Zoom and emails on my phone, in my pocket that I can be working if I'm dropping him at nursery or taking him to school, so, you know, I'm always connected, which is a massive, massive impact now - if we had had this kind of pandemic, even five, 10 years ago, I don't think the connectivity would have been there for the industry.
(22:23) Nick: Yeah, it's weird to say it came at the right time, which is just strange thing to say, but what I find interesting as well, is that we now get to see people in their natural environments and normal environments, and what amazes me is that everyone remembers that news piece, where that guy was being interviewed and he was at home and the kids are crept in and that’s just normal life now.
Lynda: But that was months ago that was before COVID and obviously that went viral and we're like “Oh my gosh, that poor man!”, and obviously we’ve all had it. I mean, obviously not in your castle, but I've certainly been sat here doing my Zoom daily meetings with the Hearst girls and my Son just pops up and he's like “I'd like to say hello”. I'm like “okay. Please just everyone, smile and nod and then he'll get off in a minute”
(24:13) Nick: No, it's lovely! And I know we've kind of touched on it a little bit, but are there 3 things that you love that PRS do? whether it’s via PRShots or just in general? And are there 3 pet hates that you've got that kind of like things that you wish they wouldn't do? And obviously no brands mentioned if there's any that's done that.
Lynda: I don't know if there's 3 of each, but certainly just being understanding of the titles, and the kind of titles that I worked for. And what my role is within those titles is critical, knowing that I'm the Fashion Director and not the cookery assistant or not the Homes Editor, you know, I can't help with those things. I can definitely tell you who to speak to, but I don't want to a press release email to me about dog leads or a really specific coffee machine that you're now pushing. Know who you're sending it to and know what the brands are, so that's definitely top priority.
A pet hate of mine is the very speculative, and I have to say this is very rarely from in-house PRs, very, very rarely, I don't think I've had it from an in-house PR before, but certainly more from the kind of PR agencies when they're much more targeted on what they're sending out and who they're sending it out to. I really dislike the speculative fishing emails; “Hi, hon. What are you working on?” I'm like “look just don't blanket email”, we know that you're sending an email to everybody in the industry, but just, “you know what I'm working on. I'm working on fashion, I'm working on Autumn season, so send me lovely stuff that you've got or new products that you've just had from the brand, that's what I want to see. But it's just a commercial title, fashion team, that's the kind of product that I want to see and to get in my good books, just send me the best, latest relevant imagery, high-res if possible, but we can use low-res in the meantime, whilst you're able to source a high-res image that is inspiring, and beautiful and new and fresh, and we want to see the product that you're selling us. We want to see it shot beautifully because we can't necessarily shoot things for shopping pages. A lot of magazine titles expect shopping pages, and I'm speaking about shopping pages because obviously PRShots has cutouts and images rather than samples, shopping pages are now expected to be free for a title. Obviously you've got the cost of your head count, but we're not really going to be shooting in studio, shooting, lovely, still lifes anymore, so we want them to be shot front on, we want to have details, we want to have flattering, shapes of the garments, for example, but you know, they're expected to be cost free and delivered on time, so as much imagery as you can or not just of your picks and highlights, we want see everything because we also do our shopping pages very differently every month. It could be very specific trend-led. It could be a more of a general vibe of the seventies look or it could be very specific gold, chunky bracelets. So depending on what we're looking for, which is really hard sometimes to articulate on an email to a PR, and also if I say ‘pretty suits’, that could be so many different things to so many different people, so if we can get as much imagery and we have to contact you for the stockist details, then you know that it's going in the magazine, rather than chasing it up all the time. But I'd say that just being aware of the title, aware of the position of that person or the team member and knowing where we are in our print schedule. Even a long lead; I know that weeklies and shorter leads have their days of the week that they edit, shoot, layout send to press; we have that similarly for a long lead. We normally go to press either at the very, very end of a month, you know, between maybe the 28th of a month to the 1st or 2nd of the next month, that’s when the title issue goes to press, which means right after that, the first couple of weeks, the next month we're working on the next issue - that's the time to contact somebody and say “what are you working on for this issue?”, “What can I help you with?”, “Have you got any other things planned that we can put on our calendar to make sure you've got all the latest information?”. So I think it comes back to just basics really. There's no sly tricks or hoops to jump through, it's really just about knowing the market really.
(28:01) Nick: Sure. And how important is pricing? Cause I know a few Editors say “actually, you know what, it's understandable that sometimes pricing can't be put on there”, but how important would you say that is, and how much does that determine whether you'll cover it or not?
Lynda: It, isn't a deciding factor. It's massively helpful to have it ready to go, but if it's not possible, it's not a big deal. I will download it and then we will get the girls to contact you for the price information. And that's when you know that it's on the page and that's how you can keep track of it. But yeah, it was massively helpful to have the prices up. If it's a production time, that kind of goes back months and you know what the prices are set at, it does help us to have it ready to go, but we can understand that that doesn't always happen.
(28:49) Nick: Okay, that's brilliant! We've now got a question from Joanne Beckerman from Dune. She posed a great question…
Joanne from Dune: I can't remember the question Nick, I think I sent it over a week ago
Lynda: I think it was a question about how I use PRShots, is that right Joanne?
Joanne: Yeah, I think so for us, we obviously do our best to upload new in and categorise everything. So it's just to ask if that's useful for you and how you best use PRShots. Do you use the search tool if you're looking for a leopard boot, do you search “leopard boot” or do you go into the brand's portal?
Lynda: I'm a bit of a control freak, so I will go on to Dune and go through all of your images. I'd like to be able to know that nothing has slipped through the net, so I would use the search engine if it was something very specific that could come from maybe a variety of different brands, but it depends. I could be doing a single shopping page, for example, on high heel loafers, so I will just go through your content listing and just scour through all of those for those loafers. I might do another search and see if it comes up in any other brands I would have thought of, but then equally I could be doing a different shopping page that, like I say, using the example of ‘seventies’ for example, and you might not have tagged a certain saddle bag as “seventies”, so that wouldn't come up in my search. But if I was doing another kind of search, just searching through constantly all of the images that you've got, then that's going to pop up and I will just grab that as well and pop that on as a styling item on the page. So I do like to search through each brand consistently and then that means that I can see everything that's on there. And then if it was the wrong drop and I spoke to you and asked for the price details, that's when you can tell me that, you know, “that was last season, we're not going to have that any more”, but I do like to be able to see as much as possible.
Joanne: Yeah that makes sense because we spend quite a lot of time adding in key words, like you say, “seventies”, if something is like a tan suede boot…
Lynda: …but I wonder if that, take the example of that seventies saddle bag; if I was doing a tan, a neutral page that might not necessarily come up either, so that's why I'm just a stickler and it's like, “look, it's going to take me a day to go through all the brands that I know and love on PRShots, that's my job for today, that's what I've got to do, because that's the way that I know I've got the best images on that page”. And each of the titles that I've worked for most recently are obviously slightly more commercial lifestyle end of the fashion spectrum, but each of those are very different personalities, very different brands, very different price brackets that I will feature on those pages, so it ranges from 30s, kind of fashion lovers at Red, really wanting cool quirky twists, and you know, what the high end designers are doing down to the high street, to 45+ at Prima and Red who are style savvy, but they prefer more timeless outfit concepts. So they will be very different and I just like to take the time and go through things. But saying that actually; the price limit is narrowing because even Red, you might've seen that for their Christmas gift guide; the limit is £100, because of COVID, because of the impact that it's had on people's lives, people's jobs, people's financial situations; that has had a massive impact, and I know that Prima, for example, in the Summer, Joe Atkinson did a brilliant shoot of dresses; every dress was under £50, if not even more, maybe even under £30, and it's huge factor for the big editors saying that “look, people do not want to see Dolce & Gabbana on their shopping page, you know, it's not relevant to me, it doesn't feel like it's my magazine any more”, so that has been a massive thing that has impacted on the content that we put through.
Joanne: So in which case that would probably be beneficial for us to have a Christmas gift card category, and then we have ‘under £100’, ‘under £50’, because then that would benefit you guys too
Lynda: Absolutely! I would say for Gift Guides, prices and price categories, and obviously ‘For Her’, ‘For Him’, ‘For the Dog’, ‘For the Pet’, ‘For the Child’, whatever, but prices are massively important if you're pushing your product for Christmas, for your gift guides, that's a very standard staple that most titles will do for their gift guides that they'll do ‘Under £250 for your husband or your wife’, ‘Under £100’, ‘Under 50’ and then Stocking Fillers. If you look at any Christmas Gift Guide over the last five years, even more, that's the kind of format that it does take, so for that sense, definitely having those price brackets would be really helpful to know.
Joanne: Okay, great, so good to have those different categories then lots of different categories within the brand page! Okay then. Thank you very much.
(34:10) Nick: That's brilliant. Thank you, Joanne! And that's interesting actually, because the point that you made there; you generally go there, you're looking for the brands that you like as well, how often is it that you're looking for a theme, a theme itself rather than a brand and that irrespective of who the brand is, if it mixes with the theme and it looks good…
Lynda: Absolutely. If we can introduce a new brand to the readers, we want to do that, so we can shout out about a small business, or a new one going on the site, or, you know, even PRShots to one side, a lot of the time we find them on Instagram and we just love this jewelry brand, this new shoe brand, and we'll put them on the magazine and that's definitely something that we like to do. We love our British high street! We always have a good emphasis on the British high street, but if we can find new and interesting details, I know that all the readers would love that, so that's never going to be a barrier to us that it's not known, but saying that; it needs to be well-stocked and easily available for the readers; there’s nothing worse than being really proud of your issue, it’s going to press, and then the readers contacting us saying “I love that dress, but it's in one shop in Dorset, how am I supposed to get it?”, so it needs to be either, if it's a boutique store or a small independent, please have an online presence and then boom, you're nationally available and you can go in the magazine.
(35:36) Nick: Yeah, ok that’s interesting. That's good. Here's another question, which was submitted today by Nichollette Yardley Moore from Vintage Cushions
Nichollette: Great! I’m over here in Ireland, so the connection falls in and out.
Nick: Okay, well you're in for now
(36:00) Nichollette: So I do cushions, but you're doing fashion, so you wouldn't really be interested in looking for cushions would you?
Lynda: Well, not necessarily. I do sometimes prop styles for shoots and things like that, and if I can give you any advice, I would expect that my colleague and the Homes team would kind of give you the same answer if there's anything that I can help with.
(36:28) Nichollette: Keywords; are they the most important thing when you're looking on PRShots?
Lynda: I think that was almost similarly as to what Joanne was asking in terms of tagging what you describe. For me personally, like I said, when I'm searching for images, I like to kind of go through extensively and see as much as I can, but I think it does definitely help know the way that you are describing your own brand, and I guess from my title, if I'm, let's put it to you in a homes magazine sort of way - if I'm styling for a particularly contemporary or modern homes, title or shopping page, then I'd be looking for more contemporary styles from you, and even the patterns or, you know, designs that you've got, but if I'm doing Country Living, for example, it might be completely different style that you've got in the way that you've tagged it and described it, it might be more relevant for that, so I think as long as you're tagging them, as many tags as you can is probably the best way to describe it. But the way you would describe it might come differently to me, that I might just put in ‘budget’ or ‘price limit’ or something like that or ‘blue’, and you've described it as ‘e-cat’ or ‘graphic’ or something like that, but as many description words as you can, if that's what you'd like to go through in terms of the description factors. But I would say that if there's a specific way that you want to get into the titles, just like I said, go back to the beginning of just know the title, know the style that they like, whether it's about a budget aspect, or if it's a natural style in terms of modern, contemporary versus rustic and, you know, ditsy florals or anything like that, I'm not sure. But if that helps just target it more specifically to those titles, and I think you’ll have more likelihood of being featured, but as long as they're widely available, there shouldn't be any barriers for you to, to be featured really.
(38:30) Nichollette: Another question, do you like follow up emails to say thank you for featuring in the magazine and would you send the PDF to be included on social media and website posts?
Lynda: - So we wouldn't normally just…
Nichollette: Would you welcome that kind of email?
Lynda: Sure. So, so am I right in thinking that you're asking when I featured your cushion on the page? I wouldn't automatically send you a PDF, I would absolutely send you a PDF if you asked for one, it's very easy to do, so anyone that says it's difficult in any way, they're fibbing, it's very easy to do – just download the PDF from the print schedule, so we can do that easily, and you can use that in any way, as long as you obviously credit the title that it's come from. And so the question is, after I've done that, would I like a follow up email saying, thank you? That's always nice. It's always nice to have a thank you, but you don't have to. I mean it's not like “WELL, she didn't say thank you to me, so I'm not going to feature her again!” No, trust me, it's not that petty, but it's always nice to say thank you. It's nice to know, but also it's nice to know that you've appreciated it. You know, we feature an awful lot of products across all the titles and all the pages. It's nice to know that it's gone down well, you know.
(39:49) Nichollette: Thank you! Now, photographs: I do just cut out photographs of the majority of cushions, what do you want to see when you're looking for…, apart from the interior shots, which aren't always possible, what else would like to see as a cutout shot as in front, back, buttons, details.
Lynda: We don’t really need detail I would say. I wouldn't worry about going into too much of the fastenings or the trim. I mean, if they wanted to do a special detailed shot of your image, the art team can zoom in, as long as it's high res enough, they can zoom in and show the beautiful tassle details along the side, for example. Front on is your standard. If you have a nice still life option of a few different styles together, scattered together, we are increasingly using lifestyle images on pages. It just adds an extra mood, a bit more higher quality of the imagery that we can't get hold of now, these model shoots. If we can get assets of lifestyles of your gorgeous cushions on a rug, or on a sofa, under a beautiful tree, that's easily going to be used as well, but I would say the cutouts have more immediacy of just being dropped onto a page, if you can imagine where those other ones, there's a lot of thought put into what brand those imagery that the lifestyle shots are from, what the vibe is, you know, I can be choosing between two identical images from a brand and it just comes down to the feel and the mood that it adds to that page. But we could always use lifestyle setups and obviously for a cushion accessory brand, you can do some really beautiful still life setups, and I don't see a problem that, that wouldn't be picked up by a magazine either.
Nichollette: Thank you very much.
Lynda: You're very welcome. Nice to talk to you.
(41:50) Nick: Yeah, thank you Nichollette. Brilliant. And I'd say it's an interesting point as well, because with the titles that you've worked with and with the different publishing houses and the likes, how different is it? Are you literally told this is what we're going to be covering? Or how often do you pitching ideas yourself?
Lynda: Well, when I was working full time, for example, rather than a freelance capacity, I'll go back to when I was at Hearst, I would have my planning meeting with Group Fashion Director and Editor-in-chief, which was Gaby Huddart, who is Editor-in-chief of basically half of the UK publishing magazines - it's insane what she manages. So I would have my planning meeting and I would have done exactly what main fashion story I'd want to do, who I'd want to shoot it with, where I'd like to shoot it, the clothes, a mood board, everything. And I would have very scatter, you know, mood boardy kind of images of shopping pages, the style, the layout that I'd like to use for the shopping page within that next issue that we'd be planning. And I would, you know, before in the good old days, we'd be in the lovely boardroom and I'd sit them down and then she would sign them off. And more recently we do it over this (Zoom) and I would share my screen and show her exactly what I'd want to do. So working full time on a magazine, it definitely comes from me and I would sign them off. Equally, very last minute we can get an extra page dropped in, if an ad dropped out of magazine and Gaby will say to me “I need an extra page and I really want to put a clever headline on the cover of the magazine about 47 boots, can you do my shopping page?” and I'm like “yes, of course I can!”. So, very rarely does that happen, but principally the main fashion stories and the shopping section, principally come from the team to the Editor, the Editor might say “I hate chunky boots! I don't want to see chunky boots; I want to see knee-high, high heeled boots”, and you say “of course we'll do that”. So, you know, it will definitely come from the fashion team who will be promoting their thoughts and we'll all discuss it between us, like I said, on the three titles, we all discuss it, we always make sure that we don't repeat in the same month that happens. So GH might've been doing saddlebags, we'll take that example, in September, but Prima won't be doing it until at least October, November, so that if you have a bundled magazine, where those magazines are bundled together in WHSmith or Tesco and, you know, lovely Margaret in Somerset gets her bundle and she's like “Oh, they've just repeated the same stuff!” that is an unhappy reader, so we definitely don't do that. So we plan it very carefully. We tend to plan the whole season at the beginning of each season, or at least the first four issues. Sit down and plan to the intricacies of the layouts of the shopping pages and that kind of thing, so we can just fire on all cylinders.
Now, oppositely as a freelancer now, and I want to pitch to other magazines that I want to do a shoot, or I want to help them out with their shopping content, I will try and pitch ideas, I will say I've got loads of great ideas, I've got gorgeous images from so-and-so, you know, I'd love to be able to put together a shopping page for you. I have to admit though that, at the moment, in the current climate, most freelancers are not being taken on by editorial titles, just because of the budget restraints and everything that we've discussed earlier, so my kind of freelance work at the moment is much more commercially brand focused rather than editorial titles. But I can kind of be sure that at the moment, all the content that you see in the magazines has been produced by, and pitched by the fashion team, to the Editor for sign off.
(45:35) Nick: That's brilliant! Ok, so I guess there is opportunity, because I was going to ask how easy is it for a brand to influence you, as to an idea that you could then potentially pitch?
Lynda: I mean, where do you think we get our ideas from it?
Nick: Yeah, absolutely. Totally!
Lynda: If you send me the most beautiful email; imagery led, please put as many images in your email. I don't, I can't read vast long emails, and as much as I like the history of the designer, I can't read it and I can't put it in the magazine, so it's not always relevant, but as much imagery; and if there is the most beautiful layout of a snakeskin, or something in details for a still life shot, then that can be like “do you know what I have seen three or four, other different brands doing the same kind of thing; I think that'd be a brilliant shopping page!”. You know, our pages, maybe Red main fashion to one side, they very rarely come from the catwalks from the big trends, you know, they're often from what we've seen, what we've glimpsed on the internet and heard from PRs that you know, it’s going to be really, really big. If you can tell me that this is a massive buy, we've got 20,000 of these units, it's like “well, that's going to be everywhere. And if I'm guessing you've got it, I bet other brands have it as well, it's going to be a big trend”, so, you know, it is definitely that way, but we are much, very much so image led.
(47:00) Nick: Ok, brilliant. And how reliant would you be, (I’m just seeing this as an opportunity now to promote us as well) but how reliant are you in that case, of PRShots in comparison to something else?
Lynda: Massively! So mentioning earlier that we are expected to do shopping pages for free… all of those images are PR imagery, we're now not allowed to shoot in a still life studio, so we need image banks like you guys to be producing those images and passing them onto us as often as possible. And there wasn't a day that I wasn't logging into it when I was working full time. And there wasn't a day that my colleagues weren't doing the same thing for Red and for Prima as well as Harpers and ELLE. So I would say at least 50% of a cutout shopping page was from PR shots, the other half only being from brands that weren't on there that would have their own assets that they would re transfer to us, and I'm not lying when I say that we share the same server, all the imagery is shared between those titles that are in that individual hub together, so it's not like Red have got the images, but Good Housekeeping or Prima don't; if it's beautiful, if it's price relevant for the lower budgets, then we've got the images we're going to use it. So PRShots has a massive impact for magazine editorially, because you've got all that power for us and we need it.
(48:32) Nick: Yeah. We noticed that, just has lock down was happening, we were getting Editors just saying that we heavily rely on it anyway, but now we need it more than anything else, so there was a mixture of feeling sorry for the brands that couldn't get the images and, you know, the Editors that couldn’t as well. So, I'm just glad you said that - so it's a big thumbs up for us.
Lynda: Definitely, definitely.
(48:51) Nick: But interestingly, I guess my last question really is thoughts about how it's changed over the time, I mean, considering everything that's gone on and considering the way that digital's become more prominent as well, what are your views on what the changes are going to be moving forward for the next year or two years maybe? Have you got kind of an idea?
Lynda: What, for the industry?
Nick: Yeah
Lynda: I know that House of Hearst have opened up again, so people will be going back into the office, but if you've got a long commute, you're not going to get on a train to go and sit in an office. Companies have really changed their opinions on people working remotely. So we're much more empowered to do that, and much more trusted to do your day's work. It doesn't matter if I'm not, you know, I would say to my boss that I need to homeschool my Son for an hour in the day, and if you need to get me, you can get me, but I'm not going to be sat at my laptop the whole day when I've got two children running around. So things have definitely changed in the way that we work and where we work and how we work. I think that will carry on, you know. Publishing houses are expensive, the buildings are expensive to run, to open. I think that it's going to be working on about a 30% capacity most of the time, so 70% of your Editors are at home, or on holiday or wherever it is, you know, that they were working from at the moment, and I think that will carry on at least until next year, if not more. Maybe the balance will swing slightly more that it might not be 95% are working from home, it might be 70%. It might be 60% of the time that you're working from home popping in for a critical meeting or styling up, for example, for a shoot, I'd like to be in the office, I don't really enjoy standing up at home. It was not fun, it was very full, very busy, very messy, and I think the impacts that we've started to see on the actual content going in the magazines will continue. The emphasis on costs and prices, the emphasis on sustainability, which therefore comes from the push to buy, kind of feels a bit unsavory now. So it's about capsule wardrobes, it's about nice tweaks to your wardrobe that you have already, ways to update last season's clothes. So it could be the power of accessories, that would be wonderful, or, you know, things that you can just, clever tricks to emulate your style icons, you know, I think that that will carry on. And certainly sustainability and the ethical side of fashion that was not going anywhere at all. So, that was a bit of a trend for a while, now it’s an assumption that, that's vital. It’s vitally important to know that our £3 t-shirt actually, I don't want that anymore.
(52:01) Nick: No, you're right, and that’s good to know as well.
Well, listen, I think that's it for now. I can't think of any other questions…
Lynda: It’s flown by!
Nick: I know, exactly, it’s gone very quickly? So I want to thank you so much. I want to thank everyone for turning up, but you specifically, obviously for being our first.
Lynda: It’s been a good turnout, it's lovely! Nice to see some PRs still working! I miss them! I miss seeing PRs.
Nick: I can imagine! Well, hopefully, when this whole thing blows over, there'll be one big get together and it'll all be good, but I guess, yeah, this has changed quite a few things, so it's nice to, even if we can't see everyone's faces, it's still nice to be in the same room, at least digitally.
Lynda: Exactly the room in the cloud.
Nick: Brilliant. Lynda, thank you so much! I really appreciate it! And you've been brilliant. So thank you very much for your input and I hope everyone enjoyed it!
Lynda: Thanks for having me.
Nick: Thank you very much
Nick: Cheers
Lynda: Bye
Nick: Bye.